For anyone who has put everything into making life work and wondered why it still feels like such a struggle.

Through a series of fortunate and unfortunate events, ups and many downs, I made an unexpected discovery that has forever altered the way I pursue goals, wishes, dreams, desires and even how I navigate day to day life. 

I’ve uncovered that the way I respond to an experience can influence both how I move through it and the outcome that follows.

Through this process I uncovered just how much fear was driving my choices and I realized that interacting with fear from a different vantage point that incorporates understanding and self trust has the ability to alter my outcome. No longer making fear the villain or something to overcome, but simply input or feedback to which I choose how I respond. 

I’m calling it an Elevated Response, and it’s the foundation of a life experiment that I am conducting and sharing from this point forward.  

But before I could recognize an alternative response, I spent many years regularly defeated, scratching my head and wondering why life seemed to be working against me.

Especially when I believed I was doing all the right things. 

Learning, applying myself, working, showing up, disciplined, listening to the experts, applying what I was taught, purpose driven and wanting to do something meaningful and make a living doing it.

Yet I kept arriving at the same frustration, I would put so much into something and still would end up disappointed, exhausted, unfulfilled, and wondering what I was doing wrong.

Each new direction I embarked on ignited new hope that this time it would be different. Only to end up at the familiar place of defeat making it harder each time to understand why history only kept repeating itself. 

Eventually, I reached a point where I could no longer continue doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome. 

There had to be another way.

Looking for Another Way

Determined to find another way, in 2024, I began a practice I called Ultimate Responsibility. It was based on the idea that life is a mirror, always reflecting me to me. 

I began to filter my experiences as feedback that would reveal to me beliefs that were influencing my thoughts, feelings, and habits and in turn what I was experiencing. 

I had heard many times that 5% of what I experience or my daily behavior or choices was determined by my conscious mind and 95% from my subconscious mind. 

And when I would hear that, it felt accurate, but I found the steps of how to submerge myself into my subconscious mind to assure my beliefs and goals were on the same page and if they weren’t how to shift them into alignment wasn’t entirely clear.

There was the insight that the subconscious is reprogrammed with repetition, but at least for me it was never made clear how to uncover the program to be able to reprogram.  

And doing Ultimate Responsibility I began to unfold a process that allowed me to do just that. 

My mission was to understand why I kept ending up in a place I was working so hard to move beyond.

When I wanted to avoid something, I began getting curious about it. 

When I felt frustrated and wanted to push harder or completely shut down, I started asking what was needing my attention. 

What was I anticipating? 

What was I trying to avoid?

What did I believe it would mean about me if something didn’t work out?

As I paid attention, I began noticing how familiar my responses were. I could recognize them in projects I hadn’t shared, opportunities I had pursued, and the pressure I put on myself throughout my entire career.

Uncovering The Common Denominator 

It wasn’t until I was redirected back to a decade old project that I began to excavate a likely culprit to repeated failed attempts to find purpose and passion and success hidden in my work. 

Interestingly enough, I continued to believe in the possibility of creating my reality, in spite of many failed attempts to curate a successful desired outcome.  

I distinctly remember the enthusiasm I had sitting in the audience of a Hay House writing workshop with the one and only Wayne Dyer. I remember when the idea for Taking the Sell Out of Sales entered my consciousness and my excitement began to swell of how I could potentially become the thought leader of replacing uncomfortable sales tactics with leading with service.

This excitement continued after the workshop and into the process of writing and submitting a book proposal. One year later, after many submissions to an editor and manuscript revisions, I finished and published my first book. 

I was officially living my passion and my purpose determined to leave a positive mark on the sales industry. 

But there was only one problem. Publishing the book was one thing, but growing an audience was another. And every day I watched myself postpone it, try to outsource it, and soon after that days passed, months passed, years passed and the pride I felt in accomplishing my publishing dream eventually became overshadowed by avoiding sharing the message I felt so convicted to share. 

Here I was, merging my passion and interest with my career with a message that mattered to me. Why wasn’t I sharing it?

Several attempts to share my work, years, and one random day later, I was lying on the floor in my office staring at my bookshelf as the hours passed me by and I couldn’t peel myself off the floor and produce any work. 

A thick book with a soft orange and yellow spine stood out to me, I pulled it off the shelf, rolled over onto my back, I subtly fanned my face as I flipped through the pages, landing on the chapter titled Resistance. There it was all spelled in a big bold font, finally the word to describe this tormenting feeling that became a part of my daily routine. Resistance. 

As it entered my awareness I started to see that this wasn’t my first encounter with resistance. 

In my real estate career, helping someone who called and needed me felt natural. I was thorough, engaged, and happy to help. But going out and generating those opportunities myself was another thing and was where my struggle lay. 

With my writing, I spent hours pulling ideas from the realm of possibility and pouring them onto handwritten pages (yes, many handwritten pages) and onto the screen of my laptop. I spent countless hours writing, yet I couldn’t bring myself to publish or share them. 

Although the outlet was different, I began to connect resistance as a common denominator to the repeated experiences I had throughout my career that resulted in disappointment or failure.  

From Ultimate Responsibility Process To Elevated Experiment

It’s one thing to be in resistance. It’s another to actually get to the very root cause and set oneself free from it. I had tried the “overcome it” approach only to find that it would clinch me even tighter. Through Ultimate Responsibility I began to approach it as an explorer in new terrain giddy with enthusiasm in the act of discovery. Realizing that the first step to loosening the grip of resistance is to actually stop resisting the resistance. 

I began conversing with it as an empathic investigative journalist and just like that it began to open up and give me an inside peek to the source of its very existence. I began to discover that it wasn’t sent to work against me after all, but it was actually there as a fierce and loyal protector. 

And it was this very discovery that evolved my Ultimate Responsibility process into an ongoing experiment that I am calling Elevated Experiment. 

A process of self discovery that alters one’s relationship with self and what is possible when we stop overcoming and start understanding. It’s quite literally a self inquiry that shifts the realm of possibility and alters personal power in a very unexpected way. 

Elevated Experiment is where I dive into and navigate experiences that often are accompanied with fear and resistance and utilize their input to shift the trajectory of an outcome.

Elevated Experiment officially begins with this essay series and I am inviting you to join me.

Welcome to Elevated Experiment, a series of experiments guided by curiosity about our relationship with resistance and fear, what it means to befriend ourselves, and how we approach what matters to us with understanding, compassion, and self-trust plays a leading role in the pursuit of goals, wishes, dreams, desires and navigating day to day life. 

And this is the official invite to join me for the Elevated Experiment introduction essay series. 

Up next I continue peeling back the layers to my own personal pursuit of sharing my work with the world that led to this discovery. Regardless of diligent attempts to move towards a purpose led career path where I was continuously rerouted to defeat and disappointment, I began to look more closely at the resistance that seemed to derail my hopes and dreams and what I uncovered led me to asking… 

What If the Formula for Overcoming Fear Is Actually Keeping You In Fear?